'Death penalty was not valid' - Privy Council orders resentence for 'Grenada 13'
February 08, 2007
The London-based Privy Council yesterday ruled that the death sentence imposed on the former Deputy Prime Minister of Grenada, Bernard Coard, and several others conivicted of murdering left wing Prime Minister Maurice Bishop in 1983, was invalid and ordered that the men be resentenced.
In a 12-page ruling, the Law Lords said that the case against Coard and 12 others should be "remitted to the Supreme Court of Grenada for the appellants to be sentenced in accordance with the construction of section 230 of the Criminal Code which their Lordships have indicated, taking into account the progress made by the appellants during their time in prison."
"Their Lordships do not think that in practice the relief sought by the appellants in relation to their sentences was ever available through the ordinary avenue of the appeal," the Privy Council, the highest court in Grenada ruled, adding that it would "humbly advise Her Majesty that this appeal should be allowed and that it should be declared that the sentence of death imposed upon the appellants was invalid".
Their Lordships ruled the man-datory sentence of death was unconstitutional.
Coard and the 12 other appellants, including the former head of the People's Revolutionary Army (PRG) Hudson Austin, were convicted of murdering Bishop and other members of his left wing administra-tion during a palace coup in 1983.
Unconstitutional
On August 15, 1991, the Governor-General signed warrants in respect of each of the appellants commuting their death sentence to life imprisonment on condition that the convicted men would be "kept in custody to hard labour for the remainder of his natural life."
But the men went before the Privy Council contending that the imposition of the death sentence was unconstitutional.
The Privy Council noted that the State did not contest that point and pointed to several cases involving similar constitutions of other Caribbean States. It said upon the true construction of the Grenadian Constitution, such a sentence was unconstitutional at the time it was passed in 1986.
"The result is that section 230 of the Criminal Code must be interpreted to mean, and has meant since the constitution came into force in 1974, that the death penalty for murder is discretionary: a person convicted of murder may be sentenced to death but may instead be given a lesser sentence. The judge did not exercise this discretion and the sentence was, therefore, unlawful." ...
Author: Gleaner Reporter
Source: Jamaica Gleaner
